Leadership in the Age of AI | Paul Hudson and Lindsay Levin | TED

Lindsay Levin: So we're living in an era with multiple overlapping disruptions

that business is facing, and I want to dive straight in

and talk about one of the biggest of those, which is AI.

How are you approaching AI?

Paul Hudson: You know, AI at scale, it's a whole big subject, of course,

but for us, at Sanofi,

we aim to be the world's leading pharmaceutical company using AI at scale.

Why and how are we going to do that?

It's pretty straightforward.

We have 23,000 people using AI as often as every month,

9,000 people in the company using AI as often as every day.

We're boldly taking on the opportunity to completely disrupt the business.

We don't have a choice.

It's the fourth industrial revolution.

It's here whether we like it or not.

And it's amazing how resistant people can be across organizations

and across industries.

But we're all in and have been quite public about that.

Our aim is to provide daily decision intelligence,

to give people a sort of nudge in the right direction,

to give them deeper insights,

to allow them to be more effective at what they do.

And it's real.

And it's such a privilege to be involved in it.

LL: I mean, you're taking a very aggressive, active stance.

What surprised you?

PH: Well, a lot of things surprise you about AI.

I mean, for some people it's Skynet and Terminator.

For some people, they confuse AI with cyber.

I'm not saying everything is perfect,

but I'm surprised at the number of CEOs or executives who --

Their first response to an AI conversation is

"Governance, controls, rules, principles."

Of course, everything has its place,

but I think we have to be honest with ourselves.

If it is the fourth industrial revolution, which we believe it is,

then hesitating,

this fear that can take over,

can deprive you of so much opportunity.

And you have to go for it.

I find that when you talk to lots of CEOs, they really are very hesitant.

Some would say even frightened.

I look internally,

people are frightened that you get this radical data transparency

You can see their data real-time.

LL: And you're experiencing that.

PH: I've experienced that and still do.

You know, people are often shocked

that you may get the insight at the same time

as somebody lower down the organization.

And then there's the lost opportunity to polish a slide deck

and re-present it in the way that I'm supposed to be informed.

It's not a deliberate, sort of, misleading approach.

It's what people know.

They get the insight, they craft the story,

they push it upwards.

And that's life in many corporations.

For us, we get the data,

I get the same data every level of the organization does.

I get the insight exactly the same time.

And then people say, "Paul, don't look, the data is not 100 percent correct."

Well, make it correct because the data is live.

So if you really jump in and make it correct,

it'll better reflect what you're doing, right?

But if we wait for perfection it's simply not going to happen.

LL: So we're seeing fear and some of that, I guess, is not unreasonable.

You know, we read reports about the impact on job losses,

for example,

to come from AI.

I wonder what mindset you believe people need to adopt

in the workforce of all generations,

as they approach or we all approach this new future?

PH: You know, the adoption of AI in particular is not about jobs.

And I know people will think that

and inevitably, more meaningful work is created.

And of course, some roles change or some skills don't match.

And therefore, you know, with the help of many of the people in the room,

you get to reshape organizations.

But in the end,

it's really about using artificial intelligence

to create this real momentum of decision making

and to be able to take such an advantage over the competition.

And we believe, I believe,

that if you create more meaningful work

and people focus on insights and action

and less on Excel and PowerPoint and Word,

then there is a chance that they enjoy their work more.

Now it may lead to productivity gains, it may lead to efficiency.

It may lead to all those things, nobody's sort of denying that.

But what I've discovered so far is when it does,

people see it quite quickly

and they put their hand up to do something else,

or to focus more on insights

than ... data crunching

and aggregation.

You know, I'm old enough to remember when the internet was launched,

you know, commercially.

And it's sort of similar arguments, even when the cell phone was launched.

"Be careful."

But the truth is, they made all our lives better.

The use cases are coming.

But I think we're starting to understand now

how much this is going to change everybody's lives.

LL: So who is leading this in the organization?

Is it a new generation?

Is it specially appointed people?

Where's the leadership coming from?

PH: It's an excellent question

because maybe I'm the last of the great dinosaur CEOs

who got to the top by doing sort of every job.

I ran Japan, I ran North America,

you know, I was in global marketing.

You know, I've done all the tasks, to get to the top,

and then I've sort of seen everything.

And so I can be involved in every discussion.

And now the younger talent are saying,

"You didn't see AI, old man."

So, you know, "I have a better insight than you do."

And "Oh, and by the way, I'm not just going to push it up to my boss,

I'd like to tell you myself."

LL: Right.

PH: So the younger talent, justifiably is saying,

"Hey," you know, "I don't need to have my work shared upwards

by a bunch of guys

who are all sitting there going, 'What do you think?'

and none of them actually know."

And so we invert the pyramid.

We have to have different people with two, three,

four years experience in the room.

Because what do we know?

And that's sort of exciting, I think, really exciting.

LL: So is AI a unique disruptor?

If we think about some of the other big challenges, you know,

we've got to shift the entire global economy to be sustainable, for example.

Is that comparable in terms of complexity?

Maybe more so?

How do you tackle that kind of an issue?

PH: I think these are the big transformational moments for society.

And, you know, sustainability is,

you know, for many, it was carbon neutrality,

then it was net zero,

it was go to COP 28,

it was put a poster by the elevator

with the meaningful work you're doing to show your commitment.

But it's really different now.

I think there's a collective realization, certainly in healthcare,

that we didn't do well enough.

And we're a very purpose-driven organization --

an industry, in fact. We do health,

we transform the practice of medicine, we invent miracles often.

And so it's very easy to say, look, we're very purpose-driven.

But it doesn't abdicate the responsibility

of removing plastic from packaging of vaccines and medicines.

It's ridiculous to even think you wouldn't have to.

Often it's harder with the regulator, by the way, to get that done

than with your own people.

LL: So you've got those kinds of projects going on, have you?

Can you give us an example?

PH: We have to do it.

We have to do it because, you know, we have this sort of approach

of what can we do

that if we don't do, it won't happen?

And that's sort of our philosophy.

You know, in healthcare, it's a good example,

you know, delivery of healthcare creates more carbon

than the airline industry.

And that's half of that, let's say five percent.

Half of that is making drugs, shipping them, doing different things.

The other half is people driving to hospitals for an appointment

in an overheated, overcooled healthcare practice, too often,

without the use of a virtual hybrid delivery of healthcare.

And it's the same as the airline industry.

And, you know, we feel, because we're in healthcare,

we have this unique opportunity.

If somebody is pre-diabetic, for example,

and you coach them and they change their lifestyle

and don't become a diabetic,

that's a difference of them creating 16 tons of carbon

as a normal adult, healthy,

and 48 tons of carbon in their adult life if they become diabetic.

That's a 3X.

That's really meaningful.

And if we don't step in and help,

we just simply never get there and we're doing a lot of work,

I'm doing a lot of work with King Charles

and the Sustainable Markets Initiative

to get people to decarbonize the delivery of healthcare,

because it's such a massive opportunity.

LL: And presumably you've got to collaborate in very different ways

than in the past to do, you know,

you're talking about supply chains to deal with something like plastic.

Are you seeing different kinds of skills from people

in order to make those collaborations?

PH: Well, I think these functions and the sustainability groups, as I said,

have come from a poster by the elevator

to being very actively involved in a lot of work to do these things properly.

And, you know, you, it's not about a competitive advantage,

in Sanofi being better at wastewater management

or renewable energy than Pfizer or AstraZeneca.

That's not a competition.

The competition is us versus, you know, destroying the planet.

So we work a lot together to do the right thing.

I work with Novo Nordisk, AstraZeneca, GSK

to try and work out ways to be kinder to the environment

in the delivery of health, and it's the right thing to do, right?

It's a shared responsibility, a collective responsibility.

LL: And we're talking here about big social challenges

beyond any one business

or industry or even country,

with an expectation that business needs to step forward.

I think partly driven by the fact that policy doesn't always work,

and we're disappointed with leadership and with government.

So a lot of finger pointing as to who's responsible

and who can act on these big shifts.

I wonder how ambitious and bold

do you feel CEOs should be about stepping forward

and helping society through some of these mega transitions

that we are faced with?

PH: You know, it's clear that companies are being pulled more

into the conversation about individual's values.

And I think people who work in our company,

and all companies,

start to try and identify themselves, perhaps rightly,

with the values of the company.

And they're starting to have much higher expectations

about the company they work for.

And it can be on all the major social issues.

You know, there's been so many difficult moments and tragic moments.

I'm often written to by people from all over the world.

"You haven't declared which side you're on on this important subject.

Why not?"

And people want to know that you are fully vested

and the company is behind them.

To be clear, it's almost impossible to get everything right.

The world is almost, you know, perfectly divided.

You can pick an issue and half your employees will tell you

"We don't agree," and the other half will say, "Well done."

And we're not used to that as CEOs,

we're used to trying to find the right sort of moment

to get the majority to say, "I'm proud of my company."

So you have to retreat a little bit and say,

I'll spend my energy on making sure whatever the issue, that the people,

90,000 people in our case,

get the very best chance to live their best version of themselves.

Could be inclusion, it could be race,

it could be many different things.

It could be LGBTQ-plus.

But whatever those issues that are being debated strongly

or less strongly in different parts of the world,

it matters to us that our people feel

they can be the best version of themselves.

So when people ask, "What do you think about this?"

"What do you think about that?"

I can have a personal opinion, but our organization,

if you're looking to match your values with ours,

is really about, we're in healthcare,

we want you to have the best life possible.

How can the company facilitate that in this sort of, maelstrom of subjects?

And we focus then -- I'm not saying we're perfect,

I don't think any company really is perfect on this,

but the expectation of our own employees to be able to set a standard on an issue

and to see it through is real.

And leading in these times is more complicated, I think,

than perhaps it has been previously.

LL: So you're describing a world

where the work of the CEO is changing very fast.

Could you just sum up for us the role of a leader in this new era?

PH: Well, I took this role at the end of 2019 and thought,

I will roll through my 100-day plan

and I will amble through getting around town halls across the world

and shake a lot of hands and do a listening tour.

And a pandemic dropped on us within a few weeks after that

and worked out of the kitchen not far from here.

And the war, Russia-Ukraine,

current war, Israel and Hamas,

and mentioned the pandemic.

China-US, the social issues.

And I think what we realize is leading

is I think somebody described it as the perma crisis, you know,

a sort of, you know, a cadence of issues

that just is relentless.

And you really have to have some resiliency leading now, I think,

and you have to recognize that there are a series of sprints in the role.

There's the fundamentals of the business that must be continued.

Then there's a metronome for us.

We feel a responsibility to bring medicines

and transformational medicines forward is non-negotiable.

At the same time,

parts of your organization is in a very difficult situation

somewhere in the world.

And we have to make sure we have the right energy, experts,

support, crisis teams, often, more recently

to protect our people

and to continue the work we do.

We ship drugs all over the world, irrespective of the stance of politics

or anything else.

People are people and if they're sick we'll help.

But it really has got very complicated.

So resiliency, agility and being open-minded,

recognizing you're not the expert many times,

trusting the advice you get from your own people,

particularly those on the ground,

protecting your people where it's necessary,

moving your people where it's necessary.

That's the sort of new expectation, really.

LL: I mean, I think we're all experiencing this sense of perma crisis.

Just to finish,

it would be great to just get a sense

of what are you really excited about right now?

PH: Well, I'm incredibly excited,

I touched on it at the beginning about the use of artificial intelligence,

particularly large language models.

Because I think it changes everything.

It's got me questioning whether I can go back

and look at medicines that didn't quite make it,

and wonder if we just didn't know enough

with the data that we had to look deep enough.

It can be, you know, recently we just did our --

this is a small example, but it's just fun,

our engagement survey,

we had a 409,000 comments,

9 million words.

And normally, somebody would make a nice slide deck

to tell me, "The organization poll is very engaged.

Never been more engaged."

"How much more engaged?" "0.1."

"OK, good, thank you."

Definitely improvement.

And so I asked them to run the 409,000 comments

through a large language model.

Forty minutes later, it told me the three things

that people love about the company

and three things that people hate about it.

I didn't need a lot of external support, didn't need teams of people.

And it was clear, it was no hallucination,

because it was there right in front of me.

And it made sense.

And I shared them with people and they're like, yeah, that's us.

And I think that's the difference between meaningful work

using -- let's talk about what it tells us

about whether our people really like it here

and bring their best or not.

I think AI for me, a relatively new CEO,

I have a chance to disrupt structural biology, electron microscopy,

I have a chance to invent medicines

and druggable targets that were never touched before.

I have a chance to take away the sort of,

I should put it, the heavy lifting,

unglamorous work that people don't like doing.

I've a chance to reinvent everything,

to do it more efficiently, reinvest in R and D.

And I have a chance to get ahead of the competition

while they're all worrying,

we have governance,

but every step forward by us

is a step of leaving behind those that are overly sensitive,

and we're happy to share.

But we can do incredible things for patients

and for the people in the company

by being more bold about stepping into the new world.

LL: Your passion is infectious.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Paul.

PH: Thank you.

(Applause)